Heard of Kickstarter? It’s the latest phenomenon taking over the Internet: enabling hopeful product designers and entrepreneurs the opportunity to turn their backs on the usual funding routes and instead turn to the willing, cash-filled arms of the general Internet public.

It’s called crowdfunding – you pitch your product to the masses, and in exchange for rewards (usually being the first to receive the finished, funded product – not equity), anyone can invest a small amount of money in that project. If the project reaches its crowdfunding target, everybody wins – the project gets funded and can develop, and the investors get the reward they were offered in return for their cash. If the targeted investment amount isn’t reached the project gets nothing, and the people who invested keep their money.

AppStori: For When VCs Say No?

Sounds like a great idea for funding an app too then. A worthwhile app is expensive to get off the ground, and if you haven’t got seed funding or the backing of an angel investor, turning that idea into a reality becomes even more difficult.

Maybe not…

AppStori focuses in on trying to solve that problem, and does everything the right way, with the same rules and a similar design to the brilliant Kickstarter. The only problem is that the rewards just don’t come as naturally for an app as they do for a product. Which means that raising a huge sum of money through crowdfunding is inevitably more difficult.

On Kickstarter, you can offer someone the chance to be the first to own your awesome, revolutionary product – for the projected retail price. Here you can’t offer that – apps are usually free or cheap as chips (literally!). So what can you offer someone apart from the satisfaction of being the guy that helped your idea get off the ground?

Bottom Line: Use AppStori to build “appvocates”!

Because the lack of a direct reward makes crowdfunding an app more difficult, an app maker’s best bet may be to use AppStori to try raising a small amount of capital in return for an interesting, engaging way of marketing to consumers. For a consumer, AppStori gives you the opportunity to be a part of a cool, new app in a way you never could before.